The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Five: The Palace at Midnight

by Robert Silverberg

  Within an hour they had everything arranged, and that afternoon they flew down to Oaxaca. As they checked in at the hotel, Hilgard had a sudden horrified fear that the clerk, remembering him from two years ago, would greet him by name, but that did not happen. Sitting by poolside before dinner, Hilgard and Celia leafed through their guidebooks, planning their Oaxaca excursions—a drive to the ruins at Monte Albán, a trip out to the Mitla site, a visit to the famous Saturday morning market—and once again he found it necessary to pretend little knowledge of a place he knew quite well. He wondered how convincing he was. They had dinner that night at a splendid Basque restaurant on a balcony overlooking the main plaza, and afterward they strolled back slowly to their hotel. The night air was soft and fragrant, and music floated toward them from the plaza bandstand. When they were halfway back, Celia reached for his hand. He forced himself not to pull away, though even that innocent little contact between them made him feel monstrously fraudulent. At the hotel he suggested stopping in the bar for a nightcap, but she shook her head and smiled. “It’s late,” she said softly. “Let’s just go upstairs.” At dinner they had had a carafe of sangria and then a bottle of red Mexican wine, and he felt loose-jointed and tranquil, but not so tranquil that he did not fear the confrontation that lay just ahead. He halted a moment on the landing, looking toward the glittering pool. By moonlight the heavy purple clusters of bougainvillea climbing the ancient stone walls of the courtyard seemed almost black. Huge hibiscus blossoms were strewn everywhere on the lawn and strange spiky flowers rose from a border of large bizarre succulents. Celia touched his elbow. “Come,” she said. He nodded. They went into their room. She turned on a lamp and began to undress. Hilgard’s eyes met hers and he saw a host of expressions cross her face in an instant: affection, desire, apprehension, perplexity. She knew something was wrong. Give it a try, Hilgard told himself fiercely. Fake it. Fake it. He ran his hand timidly along her hips, her thighs. No.

  “Ted?” she said. “Ted, what’s going on?”

  “I can’t explain. I think I’m losing my mind.”

  “You’ve been so strange. Since yesterday.”

  He took a deep breath. “Yesterday is the first time I ever laid eyes on you in my life.”

  “Ted?”

  “It’s true. I’m not married. I run a gallery at 60th near Second. I came to Mexico alone last Thursday and I was staying at the Presidente.”

  “What are you saying, Ted?”

  “Yesterday at Teotihuacan I started to walk past the Temple of Quetzalcoatl and I felt a peculiar sensation in my forehead and since then I seem to be somebody else of the same name. I’m sorry, Celia. Do I sound incoherent? I don’t think I do. But I know I’m not making any real sense.”

  “We’ve been married nine years. We’re partners in a marketing research firm, Hilgard & Hilgard, on 57th and Sixth.”

  “Marketing research. How strange. Do we have children?”

  “No. We live in a co-op on 85th, and in the summers we—oh, Ted! Ted?”

  “I’m so sorry, Celia.”

  Her eyes, in the moonlit darkness, were fixed, bright, terrified. There was the acrid smell of fear-sweat in the room, hers, his. She said huskily, “You don’t remember any of our life together? Not a thing? In January we went to San Francisco. We stayed at the Stanford Court and it rained all the time and you bought three ivory carvings at a little place across the street from Ghirardelli Square. Last month we got the contract for the Bryce account and you said, Fine, let’s celebrate by going to Mexico, we’ve always wanted to go to Mexico and there’s no better time than this. In April we have a big presentation to do in Atlanta, and in May—Ted? Nothing. Ted?”

  “Nothing. It’s all a blank.”

  “How scary that is. Hold me, Ted.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You don’t remember us in bed either?”

  “The first time I saw you was two o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

  “We’ll have to fly home tomorrow. There’s got to be some kind of therapy—a drug treatment, or maybe even shock—we’ll talk to Judith Rose first thing—”

  Hilgard felt a shiver of surprise. “Who?”

  “You don’t remember her either?”

  “That’s just it. I do. I know a Judith Rose. Tall handsome olive-skinned woman with curly black hair, professor of neurobiology at Rockefeller University—”

  “At New York Medical,” Celia said. “All the rest is right. You see? You haven’t forgotten everything! You still remember Judith!”

  “She’s at Rockefeller,” said Hilgard. “I’ve known her four or five years. She and I were supposed to take this trip to Mexico together, but at the last moment she had to cancel because she got tied up on a grant proposal, and it looked like she’d be busy with that for weeks and weeks, so we decided that I would come down here by myself, and—”

  “What are you saying?” Celia asked, amazed.

  “Why, Judith and I are lovers, Celia.”

  She began to laugh. “Oh, no! No, that’s too much. You and Judith—”

  “We both see other people. But Judith has the priority. Neither one of us is the marrying sort, but we have an excellent relationship of its kind, and—”

  “Stop it, Ted.”

  “I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m just telling you how it is between me and Judith.”

  “If you want to tell me you’ve had affairs, I can handle it. I wouldn’t even be immensely surprised. But not with Judith. That’s too absurd. Nothing’s ever certain in this world, but one thing I’m positive of is that Judith doesn’t have any lovers. She and Ron are still like honeymooners. She must be the most faithful woman in the world.”

  “Ron?”

  “Ron Wolff,” Celia said. “Judith’s husband.”

  He turned away and stared through the window. Hollowly he said, “In the world I live in, Judith is single and so am I, and she’s at Rockefeller University, and I don’t know any Ron Wolffs. Or any Celias. And I don’t do marketing research. I don’t know anything about marketing research. I’m 42 years old and I went to Harvard and I majored in art history, and I was married to someone named Beverly once for a little while and it was a very bad mistake that I didn’t intend to make twice, and I feel sorry as hell for spoiling your vacation and screwing up your life, but I simply don’t know who you are or where you came from. Do you believe any of that?”

  “I believe that you need a great deal of help. And I’ll do whatever I have to do to see that you get it, Ted. Whatever has happened to you can be cured, I’m sure, with love and patience and time and money.”

  “I don’t think I’m crazy, Celia.”

  “I didn’t use that word. You’re the one who talked of losing your mind. You’ve had some kind of grotesque mental accident, you’ve undergone a disturbance of—”

  “No,” Hilgard said. “I don’t think it’s anything mental at all. I have another theory now. Suppose that in front of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl there’s a mystery place, a—a whirlpool in the structure of the universe, let’s say—a gateway, a vortex, whatever you want to call it. Thousands of people walk through at and nothing ever happens to them. But I was the victim of a one-in-a-trillion shot. I went to Mexico in my world and the Ted Hilgard of your world went there at the same time, and we were both at Teotihuacan at the same time, and some immense coincidence brought us both to the whirlpool place simultaneously, and we both went through the gateway and changed places. It could only have happened because our two worlds were touching and he and I were identical enough to be interchangeable.”

  “That does sound crazy, Ted.”

  “Does it? Not as crazy as any other theory. Things are different in this world. You, Judith, Ron. The Updike book has a red jacket here. I’m in marketing research instead of art. The museum has a different kind of fountain. Maybe it costs twenty cents to mail a letter instead of eighteen. Everything’s almost the same, but not quite, and the longer I look, the more differences I se
e. I have a complete and vivid picture in my mind of the world on the other side of the gateway, down to the littlest details. That can’t be just a mental aberration. No aberration is that detailed. How much does it cost to mail a letter?”

  “Twenty cents.”

  “In my world it’s eighteen. You see? You see?”

  “I don’t see anything,” Celia said tiredly. “If you can delude yourself into thinking you’re entirely different from who you are, you can also very sincerely believe that the postage rate is eighteen cents. They keep changing it all the time anyway. What does that prove? Listen, Ted, we’ll go back to New York. We’ll try to get you help for this. I want to repair you. I love you. I want you back, Ted. Do you understand that? We’ve had a wonderful marriage. I don’t want it vanishing like a dream.”

  “I’m so damn sorry, Celia.”

  “We’ll work something out.”

  “Maybe. Maybe.”

  “Let’s get some sleep now. We’re both exhausted.”

  “That’s a fine idea,” he said. He touched his hand lightly to her forearm and she stiffened, as though anticipating his caress to be an initiation of lovemaking. But all he was doing was clutching at her as at a rescue line at sea. He squeezed her arm briefly, let go, rolled to the far side of the bed. Tired as he was, he found it hard to fall asleep; and he lay alert a long time. Once he heard her quietly sobbing. When sleep came to him it was deep and nearly dreamless.

  Hilgard would have liked to roam Oaxaca for a few days, enjoying its clear air, lovely old streets and easy, unhurried pace, but Celia was insistent that they start at once on the task of restoring his memory. They flew back to Mexico City on the 11:00 A.M. flight. At the airport Celia learned that there was a flight to New York in mid-afternoon, but Hilgard shook his head. “We’ll stay over in Mexico City tonight, and take the first plane out in the morning,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I want to go back to Teotihuacan.”

  She gasped. “For Christ’s sake, Ted!”

  “Humor me. I won’t leave Mexico without making certain.”

  “You think you’re just going to walk back into another world?”

  “I don’t know what I think. I just want to check it out.”

  “And you expect the other Ted Hilgard to come strolling out from behind a pyramid as you vanish?”

  She was starting to sound distraught. Calmly he said, “I don’t expect anything. It’s just an investigation.”

  “What if you do? What if you vanish into that whirlpool of yours, and he doesn’t come out, and I’m left without either of you? Answer me that, Ted.”

  “I think you’re beginning to believe my theory.”

  “Oh, no, Ted, no. But—”

  “Look,” he said, “if the theory’s crazy, then nothing will happen. If it isn’t, maybe I’ll go back where I belong and the right me will return to this world. Nobody knows. But I can’t go to New York until I’ve checked. Grant me that much. I want you to humor me, Celia. Will you do that?”

  In the end she had to yield, of course, and they checked their baggage at the airport and booked a hotel room for the night and a flight for the morning, and then they hired a cab to take them to Teotihuacan. The driver spoke little English and it was hard to make him understand that they did not intend to spend all afternoon at the pyramids, but only half an hour or less. That seemed unthinkable to him: why would anyone, even two rich gringos, bother driving an hour and a half each way for a half-hour visit? But finally he accepted the idea. He parked at the southernmost parking lot, near the museum; and Celia and Hilgard walked quickly across the road to the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. His throat was dry and his heart was pounding; and she looked equally tense and drawn. He tried to retrace his steps exactly. “I came through this way,” he said, “and just around this corner, as I got my first glimpse of the facade—”

  “Ted, please don’t. Please.”

  “Do you want to try? Maybe you’ll go through it after him.”

  “Please. Let’s not.”

  “I have to,” he said. Frowning, he made his way along the paved walkway, paused as the facade and its fierce serpent-snouts emerged in sight, caught his breath, plunged onward, waiting for the moment of vertigo, that sensation as of a highly localized earthquake. Nothing. He looked back. Celia, pale, grim, arms folded, was staring at him. Hilgard returned and tried it again. “Maybe I was just six inches off that time. A little to the left—” Nothing. Nothing the third time, or the fourth. A few other tourists passed by, staring oddly at him. Back and forth he went, covering every inch. The pathway was narrow; there were only a few possible routes. He felt no vertigo. No gateway in space opened for him. He did not tumble through into his rightful world.

  “Please, Ted. Enough.”

  “Once more.”

  “This is embarrassing. You look so damned obsessive.”

  “I want to go where I belong,” Hilgard said.

  Back and forth. Back and forth. He was beginning to feel embarrassed too. Perhaps she was right: this was mere madness that had possessed his soul. There are no gateways. He could not walk back and forth in front of those horrendous stone faces all afternoon. “Once more,” he said, and nothing happened and he turned away. “It doesn’t work,” he told her. “Or else it works only when one’s counterpart is passing through it at the same instant. And that would be impossible to arrange. If I could send him a message—tie it to a rock, toss it through the gateway, tell him to be here tomorrow at nine sharp—”

  “Let’s go,” Celia said.

  “All right. Yes.” Defeated, dejected, he let her lead him across the dry hot temple courtyard to the waiting taxi. They returned to Mexico City in the full madness of the evening rush hour, saying little to each other. Their hotel room turned out to have two single beds instead of a double. Just as well, Hilgard thought. He felt an immense airless distance between himself and this woman who believed she was his wife. They had a bleak dinner at a Zona Rosa restaurant and went to sleep early, and before daybreak they were up and out and on their way to the airport.

  “Maybe when you’re in your own home,” she said, “you’ll begin to get pieces of your memory back.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  But the co-op on East 85th meant nothing to him. It was a handsome apartment, thirty stories up, obviously worth a fortune, and it was furnished beautifully, but it was someone else’s house, with someone else’s books and clothes and treasures in it. The books included a good many that he also owned, and the clothes fit him, and some of the paintings and primitive artifacts were quite in accordance with his own taste. It was like being in one’s twin brother’s home, perhaps. But he wandered helplessly and in growing panic from room to room, wondering where his files were, his little hoard of boyhood things, his first editions, his Peruvian pottery collection. Delusions? Phantom memories of a nonexistent life? He was cut off from everything that he thought to be real, and it terrified him. The Manhattan phone book listed no Theodore Hilgard on Third Avenue, and no Hilgard Galleries, either. The universe had swallowed that Ted Hilgard.

  “I phoned Judith,” Celia said, “and told her something of what happened. She wants to see you first thing tomorrow.”

  He had been to Judith’s Rockefeller University office often enough, just a few blocks east of his gallery. But this was a different Judith and her office was at New York Medical, uptown at the edge of Spanish Harlem. Hilgard walked over to Fifth and caught a bus, wondering if he had to pay his fare with some sort of token in this world, wondering if the Metropolitan Museum was where he remembered it, wondering about Judith. He negotiated the bus problem without difficulty. The gray bulk of the museum still crouched on the flank of Central Park. Upper Fifth Avenue looked more or less untransformed, the Frick Collection building just as dignified as ever, the Guggenheim spiral as peculiar as ever. And Judith was untransformed also: elegant, beautiful, warm with the light of that wonderful intelligence gleaming in her eyes. The only
thing missing was that certain mischievous sparkle, that subliminal aura of shared intimacies, that acknowledged that they had long been lovers. She greeted him as a friend and nothing more than a friend.

  “What in God’s name has been going on with you?” she asked at once.

  He smiled ruefully. “Between one moment and the next I seem to have had a total identity transplant. I used to be a bachelor with an art gallery down the block from Bloomingdale’s. Now I’m a married man with a marketing research company on 57th Street. And so on. A burst of dizziness at the ruins of Teotihuacan and everything in my life got switched around.”

  “You don’t remember Celia?”

  “It isn’t just amnesia, if that’s where you’re heading. I don’t remember Celia or anything else having to do with my life here. But I do remember a million other things that don’t seem to exist any more, a complete reality substructure: phone numbers, addresses, biographical details. You, for instance. The Judith I know is with Rockefeller University. She’s single and lives at 382 East 61st Street and her phone number is—you see what I mean? As a matter of fact, you may be the only link between my old life and this one. Somehow I got to know you in both identities. Figure the odds against that.”

  Judith looked at him with intense, somber concern. “We’ll arrange a full battery of neurological tests right away. This sounds like the damnedest mental short circuit I’ve ever heard of, though I suspect I’ll turn up some similar cases in the literature. People who experienced sudden drastic dissociative reactions leading to complete disruption of personality patterns.”

  “Some sort of schizoid break, is that what you’re saying?”

  “We don’t use terms like schizophrenia or paranoia much any more, Ted. They’ve been corrupted by popular misconceptions, and they’re too imprecise anyway. We know now that the brain is an enormously complex instrument that has capabilities far beyond our rational understanding—I mean freakish stuff like being able to multiply ten-digit numbers in your head—and it’s entirely possible that given the right stimulus it can manufacture a perfectly consistent surrogate identity, which—”